The invention relates to an auxiliary apparatus for discharging incineration residue from furnaces, particularly refuse incinerators, with a trough or tank to which the incineration residues are supplied by means of a drop shaft, a movable piston removing the combustion residues from the trough to a discharge chute and at least through maintenance and inspection opening provided with a door and arranged in a side wall of the trough.
Apparatus of the aforementioned type are, for example, known from DE-OS No. 2,739,396 and DE-OS No. 2,539,615. However, in the case of the known apparatuses, it is only possible to discharge incineration residues from the trough to the chute by means of the piston when the drop shaft is sufficiently full with such residues. Thus, it is only then that, after each piston stroke, sufficient combustion residues can pass from the drop shaft to the trough to fill the piston stroke volume and form a plug, which is moved to the chute during the next stroke. In the case of the known apparatuses, the incineration residues can only be moved thorugh the chute when it is sufficiently filled with such residues. Thus, it is only then that each plug fed to the chute is able to advance the plug of the preceding stroke enabling the incineration residues to be gradually conveyed through the chute, plug by plug, until at the end of the chute they pass into a suitable transporting means for the removal thereof. Thus, it is disadvantageous in these apparatuses that in the case of faults in the vicinity of the drop shaft or the chute, the latter cannot be operated empty, i.e. the incineration residues must be hand shovelled through the maintenance opening. This always leads to a long operating stoppage and is linked with considerable accident risks for the workers working in the trough. In addition, the need to provide for the manual emptying of the incineration residues through the maintenance opening, means that in the vicinity of the latter and the trough a considerable amount of space must be left, inter alia for the parting and movement of transportation means for removing the incineration residues which have been shovelled out.